Hippie House (15 page)

“Knock again.”

This time it was Eric's intention to hammer loudly. We were cold and it was getting late. Another few seconds passed.

“Someone said come in,” Eric told me.

“I didn't hear it.”

But then I had a close-fitting hat on. Eric had a looser hood and was likely able to hear better than I.

He listened again. “I heard them. They said come in.”

“Go ahead then.”

He pressed the thumb latch and walked in the door. All I recall of the next few moments was Eric's startled scream, “Don't shoot!” the pinking shears crashing to the floor, women screaming and a blinding flash of light. I crept in behind my brother. He was lying flat on his stomach, with one cheek against the cold marble in the middle of the front hall. A bright light beat down on both of us and, shielding my eyes, I looked up.

“It's Emma!” cried Hetty's voice.

The light suddenly went out. I blinked, momentarily blinded. When I was able to look up again, I saw Ruby on the staircase.
She stood on the landing behind a gun mounted on a tripod. It was aimed directly at the front door. Tanya crouched behind a spotlight in the hallway and Hetty was at the bottom of the stairs, shouldering a wide broom. She reminded me of a young but defiant soldier.

“Oh, Emma!” Ruby left what turned out to be a BB gun and ran to help Eric get up. “We thought you were—well, somebody else. I'm so sorry, Eric.”

By then Eric had raised himself on his elbows, determined it was safe and crawled to his feet. He pulled off his hood and shook his hair. “Man, Mrs. DeSousa, you scared me half to death.”

I had to admire my brother. He was shaking. His cheeks were drained, no longer bright from the cold, yet he managed to remain reasonably calm. I could just about guarantee that if I had done what they had done to him, I would have been throttled until I was nearly dead.

“Oh, dear. I do apologize. We didn't want to answer the door when we didn't see a car, and then the door just began to open. It's just the three of us. We have to be ready for anything you know.”

Eric studied the gun, the spotlight on its rolling trolley, and Hetty armed with her broom. The tripod and spotlight setup was something he might have devised to prevent me from invading his room. He ran a hand through his messy hair and cracked a wry smile. Bending down to pick up the pinking shears, he handed them to Ruby. “I hope they didn't damage the floor. Emma wanted to return these.”

Ruby assured him there was no damage to the floor.

“We've been rehearsing every night,” Hetty told us, clapping her hands together. “This was just perfect. It was like a dress rehearsal. Like the real thing.”

Eric nodded. “Glad I could be of help. But next time I think I'll phone first.”

“Yes, well, maybe next time,” Ruby said. “At least until the killer is caught and we're not so jumpy anymore.”

T
HERE WAS A RED
corduroy jumpsuit with flared pants and a full front zipper in the window of Maury's store that Megan just had to have. It was, for sure, the coolest, sexiest piece of clothing we had ever seen. Aunt Alice did not think it was a very prudent purchase. It was far too frivolous in her mind, hardly a classic that you could depend on for several years of service. Just how many seasons could you get from a red jumpsuit with flared pants anyway?

“But it's my money,” Megan told her. “I earned it and I can buy what I want.”

“Yes, I know.” My aunt sighed as she pulled to the curb in front of Maury's store. “All I'm trying to do is teach my children to handle their money carefully. If it's really what you want, go ahead and buy it if you think it's wise.”

Hetty and I thanked Aunt Alice for the ride. We followed several feet behind Megan, who had already slammed the door and was clomping ahead into the store.

“Geez,” Megan moaned. “My mother would dress me in potato sacks if she could get her way. They'd cost next to nothing, they'd be easy to slip into and they'd last for centuries.”

The jumpsuit looked terrific on Megan. She stood before the full-length mirror hung on a wall of the change room Maury had created in a corner of the store with a curtain of fabric and beads. Megan filled the jumpsuit in all the places the darts and gathers allowed. I looked at her reflection in the mirror, and with a small jealous pang it struck me that my taller skinny cousin had turned into a woman. Less than a year and a half younger, I suddenly felt a decade behind.

“Well?”

“You look almost like Raquel Welch. But here.”

Hetty pulled the ring attached to the front zipper down to reveal a little more cleavage. More than even Megan had dared to show.

“Hmm. You don't think that's too much?”

“No way. If we had even half of what you have, me and Emma would do the same thing.” Hetty looked to me for agreement.

“Right, even half,” I said.

Maury was moving between the racks of clothing carrying a roll of labels, marking down old stock. For a number of weeks, he and his business had come under scrutiny. I had heard this through my brother, who had learned that detectives had made more than one trip through his store. Eric's sources said that Maury was always accommodating, answering their sometimes ambiguous questions politely. On this particular Saturday morning as Megan tried on the jumpsuit, Constable Wagner, accompanied by two detectives, again swept into the store. After a cursory glance around, they began to question Maury. This time there was nothing ambiguous in what they asked. They wanted a list of his customers.

“A list?” Maury set the role of labels on the front counter. Disappearing for a moment, he returned from the back room with a couple of chairs. He held forth a hand and invited the
officers to sit down. “Have a seat, gentlemen. Can I interest anyone in coffee?”

Constable Wagner shook his head. The detectives remained where they were.

“A list. Well, at one time or another I guess I've sold something to pretty well every young person in this town. And a few not so young. I could pull out copies of last month's receipts, but that's quite a stack you'd have to go through. Can't you get a list of kids through the high school?”

“You know that's not what we mean.”

The younger of the two detectives took Maury up on his offer and sat down. He scanned the row of suede jackets, the shiny paisley shirts and the chunky-heeled shoes. He leaned forward. “Mr. Kaplan, we want a list of every pot-toking, hash-head, acid-head, speed freak, coke-snorting, pop-eyed junkie you supply.”

I could see Maury's face through the beads. Until the final few words he hadn't flinched. It was the speed freak, coke-snorting, pop-eyed junkie references that got him mad.

“Hey, wait a minute. There are some things I don't sell.”

Which was very true. There were no junkies in Pike Creek, and if Maury was responsible for anything, he could take credit for this fact. Maury Kaplan had been the first to make many aspects of underground culture accessible. This meant, for my generation, he'd brought cool to Pike Creek. But with or without him it would have arrived at some point, so it could hardly be said he was singularly responsible. What he was responsible for, for all of us who admired him, was fostering a sort of self-respect.

The men were silent for a moment before the subject was abruptly changed. “Tell us, Mr. Kaplan, what brought you to Pike Creek and how long have you owned this store?”

“I thought I already told you guys that stuff.”

It didn't seem to matter that he had already told his story; it was apparent they wanted to hear it again.

I knew the story well myself.

Before coming to Pike Creek, Maury had owned a music store in his native Detroit. He sold records—rhythm and blues made up most of his stock. Six months before President Nixon sent troops into Cambodia and the National Guard shot four students at Kent State University, Maury received his draft notice. He and his partner immediately made the decision to sell. Maury moved north to Canada. He'd first spent a bit of time on the West Coast, where he had met people in the same situation and become active in the anti-war crusade.

“But most of all, I wanted to keep a low profile. I didn't come to this country to cause trouble. All I ever wanted to do was to blend in.” He put a question to the detectives. “With the FBI on your tail and the possibility of spending the next twenty-five years in prison, wouldn't you?”

The officers left his question unanswered. Constable Wagner told him to go on.

He was driving to Wasaga Beach one Sunday when he stopped in Pike Creek. He liked the open spaces, the rolling hills and the town's proximity to larger cities. The Dairy Bar was jammed with local kids the day he passed through, and after touring around he saw an opportunity to open a hip and trendy store. With all the young people, it was something the small town seemed to lack. Maury invested what money he had left from selling his previous business. He had been operating the store just over a year.

“And your former partner? Your other friends?”

The detective was referring to Maury's American buddies who had taken up residence in other parts of the province and dropped in on him once in awhile.

Patiently, he told them where each of his friends ended up and how they were employed. One had a teaching job in a high school, one was a journalist, and his former partner was in Montreal working on a master's degree in fine arts. Joey Schuster,
who was a childhood buddy and grew up in the same area of Birmingham, was now working as an electrician in Mississauga. And not one, he adamantly insisted, was a murderer, which of course was why they were struggling to build lives north of the border rather than be sent to Vietnam.

“And your wife?” the detective who was still standing asked.

“Ex-wife,” Maury corrected.

“Where is she?”

Maury tugged at his beard. He shrugged. “You know, I haven't a clue.” He then went on to describe his marriage as a brief and crazy thing that happened in ‘68. He laughed as he told the story. He'd met his wife on a Friday evening at an outdoor rock concert. Saturday morning as they stood in the food line they were planning their wedding; they would exchange daisy chains and they would quote from
The Little Prince
.

On Sunday, with buttercups laced through their hair, they were married by a lawyer who happened to be standing behind them in line. Two weeks later, lying in bed after waking early in the morning, Maury realized the lines he'd read from
The Little Prince
made no sense. At least not in the context of their marriage. Thankfully, his wife did not need to be convinced how ludicrous the whole thing was. They parted amiably and went their separate ways.

“Look,” Maury finished, “what is all of this about? Am I a suspect in the murder?”

The detectives glanced at one another. Finally, the one sitting down stood up. “No, you're not. But another girl has gone missing. She was last seen outside of Caledon two days ago. We're checking all angles. Thanks for your time.”

They left without getting their list.

THE MISSING GIRL WAS
seventeen-year-old Fiona Young. She was last seen riding her bicycle along the highway ten miles west of
Pike Creek near Caledon as she returned home from the stable where she had spent the afternoon riding and grooming her horse. The bicycle was found in a farmer's field near a water trough. Fiona's purse lay nearby, where it had been crushed by cattle as they came to drink from the trough. But it was not crushed so much that detectives missed the small envelope of powder in her change purse. It had once been a tablet of LSD. This was no doubt the reason detectives first targeted Maury as they searched for a connection between the two disappearances and the two towns.

It was probably understandable that investigators would think her abduction could somehow be related to the drug, but Fiona's best friend was quoted in the
Pike Creek Banner
as saying that it wasn't connected in any way. She and Fiona had been given the drugs by a mutual friend at a dance the previous weekend. Fiona had been too uncertain to take it. She had not known what to do with it, and so there it was for her parents to wonder about anyway.

Hetty believed Fiona's friend's story, although Megan didn't. “She's covering. What else is she going to say?”

“You mean the way you tell your mom you smell like smoke because you've been standing in the smoking area at school? Like your mom believes it.”

Megan ignored her.

“Besides, why would she cover it if it could lead to the murderer? That hardly makes any sense.”

“They don't even know if she's been murdered,” I reminded them. “There's no body, remember?”

“Emma,” said Hetty, “there isn't a body yet, but I think we all know how this is going to end.”

Hetty was right and I had no reply.